Thursday, November 4, 2010

CLIFE!!!!!!

This was my entry into the See Life through the Lens competition organised by Infosys HRD. The theme of this is to show the values that we follow at Infosys. CLIFE means customer focus, leadership by example, integrity and transparency, fairness and excellence in execution, to achieve its goals. They wanted us to click something special which fits well for any one of these values. I tried my hand in clicking something. The picture according to me depicts the Values Leadership Quality and also Integrity and transparency showed by a cute, innocent kid. Last week I was enjoying the weekend in Bannergatta National Park. I was completely involved in clicking some snaps of the caged animals. At that time I became a part of few people who witnessed an interesting incident. As usual people were putting some coins in the Elephant's trunk. Elephant was politely accepting the amount and it was acknowledging everyone by putting its trunk on top of the donor. But at that time there were quite a few number of kids who were watching that act and they were enjoying the show. But none of them came forward to keep the coin in the elephant’s trunk. By seeing their faces I was sure that they all were scared after seeing that animal. This went on for sometime and finally I saw a brave, innocent boy, who might be around eight or nine years old coming forward with a two rupee coin. He with complete calmness came near the Elephant, kept the coin in Elephant’s trunk without any fear, elephant as usual acknowledged in its style and he went back near his mother jumping joyfully with a unexplainable satisfaction. After seeing that kid, many kids started doing the same and it was a complete fun for the kids after that. They walked to and fro with some coins and they all enjoyed with their new, silent, innocent friend. After witnessing that I realized how that small kid showed his Leadership quality at such a young age. By going first he showed the way to other kids. Leading the way with courage is what Leadership is all about. He also showed one more value at the same moment that is the Integrity and transparency by trusting the monster and respecting his inner voice. His action indicated the trust he had on that big animal and his willingness to share something with the unknown. Finally after witnessing that kid’s act I learnt the fact that “In any relationship, the essence of trust is not in its bind, but in its bond”.